Who said they were derivative? I think it's all very technically well crafted, when I say, "by the numbers." I can see the formula, the set ups the pay offs, punchlines whatever, and I just don't see them as innovative and groundbreaking as the fans of the respective shows say they are. I can see why someone would think they are funny, but it's missing something for me, a sincerity, maybe, I'm really not sure.

Isn't being derivative the alternative to being innovative and groundbreaking?

To me, Curb Your Enthusiasm fails where Seinfeld succeeded because Seinfeld created its own sort of cartoonish little universe, where the absurdity of its goofily interwoven storylines could play better (at least until David quit.) Curb feels a lot more grounded in reality style-wise, it's a little more documentary-like in its presentation; and to me, the continuation of those goofy Seinfeldian story threads, along with the often intentionally annoying attitudes of the characters, don't fit into that context as well. I always find myself wishing David wouldn't try so hard with his plotting, as it never strikes me as being as clever as he seems to feel it is. He has this great style for Curb, but I feel like he often mistakes his comedic flaws (a predictable and gimmicky "whup! wouldn't you know it!" quality) for his strengths. I.e. the funniest moments of Curb are -- to me -- usually not the ones that David intends to be funniest. But, that's just me.

I just watched the newest Silverman episode earlier this evening, and also see it falling prey to that "trying too hard" feel, which is a shame. But this "Face Wars" episode ... meh. The first two episodes were inferior to anything in the 1st season, and the newest inferior to those two. But I guess every serialized show has some hits and misses.

Still, these are admittedly among the few shows I will make time for. I liked Arrested Development a lot for the first two seasons, though it had to grow on me. I have a feeling that the experience of watching that show sequentially on DVD is a lot better than just catching a random episode here or there, so I'm glad my experience was the former. And after being indifferent to it for quite a while, I feel like South Park's suddenly had a lot of particularly funny episodes again lately, though I'm not sure if the season I've been watching is the newest one or not.

I caught just a bit of the US version of the Office, and thought it not as good as I'd been told it is. I might give it a rent sometime though. Is the UK version better? I've been told it's not as good, but I don't trust the people who've told me so.

It's so subjective, what's funny and what isn't to people, and why. Seems difficult to critique coherently.

K

Yeah, I suppose. What show isn't derivative these days. Maybe I'm just mixing up terms.

You mentioned Arrested Development. A show that in my mind was unique, innovative and took risks. And had a richness and sincerity to it. Not everyone liked it either, but in my mind it was so much more innovative than these others.

Even the American Office, as derivative as it was, by the second season it developed a unique voice.

I think shows like Sarah Silverman, Always Sunny, and to some extent Larry David suffer from their own arrogance. Where Arrested Development was apologetically self-aware, these others are obnoxiously and overtly, self-aware with an in-your-face smirk. Cartoonish, style humor, over-the-top, unrealistic, unrelatable, characters and situations with a modern, hipster, emperors new sit-com sensibility. It just seems to be missing something. They may be as original as any out there in recent years, and may be crafted as well as any, and still fail to succeed in doing anything new, and innovative. The final product no more original than anything most networks have put on in the last few years, just less formulaic?

We were talking about Little Miss Sunshine earlier in the thread. As unique as each character was, as unique as that family was, (and many of the situations), they were still anyone and everyone. The story made you hate and like each character, it was original, and unique, with rich and multi-dimensional characters with purpose and motivations that we could all understand and relate to. Even though they do and experience things on the same or similar level of outrageousness as the sitcoms we are talking about, there was a logical progression, to the extreme. Unlike Silverman or Sunny, or Larry David where the characters are supposed to be extreme from the start, Sarah's obliviousness and denseness is just supposed to be funny. A character that works in her stand-up act, because of the unwritten contract with the audience that works in that medium, but it becomes cartoonish, two-dimensional and unrelatable in a sitcom. Have you seen "Spaced," british sitcom? The characters there have outrageously over the top adventures, and do stupid things, but they are not stupid themselves. Some of the same guys did Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

Aw, hell, what do I know, I'm the only person I know who liked "The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin."

Remind me to watch Sarah Silverman, then.

Silverman's not been on here yet (as far as I'm aware). But I loved Curb Your Enthusiasm. It had the odd so-so episode, but by and large it got some big laughs from some of my friends and me.

To answer Joe's question of is it 'you either get it or you don't', or is it 'it'll grow on you': Well, it's both, I think. Like The Office, you have to give it a chance if you're not used to that sort of humour; but then again some people just will not like it at all, ever. Part of getting CURB I think is being able to connect with the character. Some of my friends and I who like it can often see where David's coming from; he has part of me screaming "you're a dick, shut up!" and part saying "well he has a point, a darn good point, actually". Whereas, those of my friends who don't like the show just see him as a dick with no redeeming aspects.

The Office (UK) is the programme I'd most compare to CURB. They both have that 'straight cinematography' doc feel to them (more so in The Office, with its documentary mise en scène). They both often climax with the antihero protagonist in a set piece that is both hilarious and yet kind of hard to watch, because they engender that 'embarrassed on their behalf' cringe feeling.

Extras has similar humour to The Office, but it has two main characters that are more likeable, in an orthodox way, than the main character from The Office. Flawed, but likeable.

Oh, and recently I've rented two dvds: "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Don't Look Now".

"Murder" was what I expected. Not fantastic or anything, but not disappointing.

DLN was a bit disappointing, unfortunately. I knew a lot about the film before seeing it. I knew, more or less, the plot (including ending), and had heard so much positive commentary on it. One of my favourite books on science fiction, horror and fantasy films, Fantastic Cinema by Peter Nicholls, gave it a big recommendation. Yet... I don't know. It wasn't bad. I guess a lot of the impact comes from the ending, which is weakened somewhat if you're well aware what happens beforehand.

I felt the symbolism was too obvious. Right from the outset you could see they were going to make water and broken glass 'deep and meaningful' tropes to allude to whateverthefuck. I was snapped out of the film. I got back into it, and overall would say I found the film interesting enough, but it was less impressive than I was hoping it would be.

My wife and I rented Steve Martin's Shopgirl, over the weekend.

What a godawful piece of self indulgent, garbage. Clair Danes was ok. But her character has no self respect, personality or any significance to the story other than being the girl in a love triangle. An extremely long, boring movie about a love triangle with people who have no rapport whatsoever, and express no real attraction and have no reason to be together. It was like a modern day version of Jane Austen's Emma, but without that tedious interesting dialogue, and not a single redeemable character. There's occasional and jarringly pretentious narration by Martin himself. And a completely out of place, Three's Company plot twist with a co-worker trying to steal a rich boyfriend.

I just watched Slums of Beverly Hills and, well... It was interesting.

The cast is chock full of people I like: David Krumholtz, Alan Arkin, Kevin Corrigan, Carl Reiner...

You repeatedly get to see Marisa Tomei and Natasha Lyone's breasts, so that's an added plus.

The story is funny in a way designed to make people uncomfortable, and for the most part it works. But it almost works too well.

The humor relies a lot on situations that are funny precisely because they're the sort of thing women normally wouldn't talk about when guys are around. So, it feels really honest. But after hearing about how brilliant this movie is for years, I felt sort of let down by how awkward and unpleasant it is at times.

Natasha Lyone and Alan Arkin completely rock. I met David Krumholtz briefly at the Seattle International Film Festival -- two years ago? -- and he was nice. I've never met Natasha Lyone or Alan Arkin. But they completely rock anyway.

Matthew

I've met Lyonne. Drugs have not been kind. She's fat and desiccated with too much makeup -- like a frosted pastry that's been sitting in the case too long.

Krumholtz rules. Numb3rs is my current favorite show.

Anyway... I'll ignore the unwanted input from the Reeceman for now...

Winners and Sinners: A really silly ensemble comedy featuring Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan and, uh, four other guys. And the actress playing one of the other guys' sister. Sammo is part of a gang of inept crooks. Jackie is a cop who keeps showing up every so often to do Jackie Chan stuff.

They're all trying to stop some Chinese bad guys who are counterfeiting American money. But they don't actually join forces except for a couple of scenes where Sammo jumps into fights to help Jackie. Which makes the story structure pretty interesting when the other four guys aren't doing dumb stuff that's supposed to be funny. A pretty good heist movie keeps coming to a dead stop so that the crooks can be shown bonding, or working at their lousy day job or doing something that seems like a scene from a Police Academy movie.

Jackie Chan gets to do some cool stuff like a fun sequence that involves rollerskating tricks and a car pile up of Blues Brothers proportions, but Sammo Hung does most of the Jackie-style stunts in the movie... which kind of makes sense since Hung also directed it, but it brings up the question of why have Jackie in the movie at all since he only shows up about every twenty minutes or so to do stuff that the movie doesn't really need. It's like he's off in movie B, which is sort of a lower budget version of Police Story, while everybody else is having fun in movie A.

It's a fun little movie, but you might be tempted to skip some of the parts that don't involve any car chases or kung fu fighting.

Recommended.